Soon, we were permitting ourselves a few wild-card contenders, because list-making is more art than science. Of course, we’re critics, so we decided to allow any film included in one of our previous best-of-the-year lists to compete too.
A movie released in less than four theaters could force its way into the mix, we determined, if it had been nominated for an industry award - from the Academy, the Directors Guild, the New York Film Critics Circle, etc. But were we punishing smaller films simply because their distributors deemed them uncommercial? Cue the guilt, and the exceptions. That cut down the crop to something slightly more manageable. Perhaps arbitrarily, we decided that for a film to be eligible for our ranking, it had to have played in at least four theaters in the U.S. The sheer amount posed the first and biggest challenge of putting together this list: deciding which of the movies that filtered through theaters and VOD services and streaming platforms qualified for a ranking of the decade’s best films. Not everything has been marked by radical changes, even over 10 years and the release of so many movies. Toy Story 3 came out, and now we’re on … well, Toy Story 4. Netflix, which is likely to be competing with itself at the Oscars this year, was just starting to stream in Canada. Hypercool indie darlings Robert Pattinson and Kristen Stewart were the coupled-up stars of a lucrative supernatural teen romance. É irônico que o filme mais recente, mais insosso e menos bem-sucedido baseado nesse material de origem, seja o mais rápido de se obter uma sequência.From celestial collisions to man-eating aliens to human centipedes, here’s to another decade at the movies.* Um final de cliffhanger provoca uma sequência direta, já sendo filmada com o mesmo elenco e equipe, sob o título Mojin: The Dragon Ridge. O problema é que, com exceção de Gu Xuan e do bom e velho Cheng Taishen, eles não têm a presença necessária para ocupar funções que o roteiro faz quase nenhuma tentativa de consubstanciar. E não é sobre fama: que esses atores são relativamente desconhecidos não é o problema. Marc Ma, Yu Heng e Chen Yusi não causam nenhuma impressão. Gu Xuan tem mais presença e é adequada, mas, novamente, ela não está na mesma liga que Shirleys Yao Chen e Shu Qi anteriores. Como Hu Bayi, Cai Heng segue os passos das guitarristas Mark Chao e Chen Kun - para não mencionar Zhang Hanyu, pronto para assumir o papel em mais uma adaptação em breve e ele é quase inexistente na tela. Rewatch Value 3.0 Não ajuda que o filme esteja desesperadamente baixo em carisma, os atores são robôs sem expressão. Overall - a fun creature feature, nowhere close in acting, production or story quality to the much superior Mojin: The Lost Legend.
Some of the sets looked like ye olde Star Trek 1960s paper Mache rocks quality, which is cheesy. The action choreography could use some work. They added in a love interest for Fatty/Pang Zi - that was nice for him! The traditional music is wonderful and fits with the movie's style.
There's a lot of action and various locales. Professor Sun (Cheng Tai Shen) does the majority of the good acting, as he doesn't have much "action" chops. This version of Wang Pang Zi (Yu Heng) is perhaps the LEAST annoying as in this movie I actually don't recall him doing his usual job of prematurely opening something or setting off a trap! Maybe it's because there isn't much in the way of Tomb Raiding in this movie, which is more of a creature fest. Hu Ba Yi (Julian Cai) has become Machete Kills and gained the skill of swimming, fighting and climbing while holding a Machete and chopping at everything. Shirley (Gu Xuan) has turned into a Legolas Wannabe who possesses and "Endless Quiver" (that never runs out of arrows). The heroes in this version are super amped up in their fighting skills. In this movie the heroes are of course still on the hunt for a mystical round globe (sometimes called Pearl or Orb) that can maybe cure them of their "Eye" curse or disease. It is not as good as the first, but it's still decent fun. Action Hero iteration with bad CGI and confusing plot Mojin: The Worm Valley is widely considered the second CGI movie following Mojin: The Lost Legends.